


The Ghost Of Pyke

by qodarkness



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Dissociation, F/M, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Look this one just is pretty grim, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Though things do get way better, eventually, terrible parenting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2020-10-05 15:09:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20490887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qodarkness/pseuds/qodarkness
Summary: She had sought to save Theon from being Ramsay’s prisoner and instead had made him hers.





	1. Chapter 1

The man hadn’t lied. Theon wasn’t in the dungeons. 

“Last cage on the right,” said Bolton’s man and Yara thanked him as she slit his throat and dropped his body to the floor of the kennels. 

Past the barking, howling dogs, into the dark, just enough light from the torches to see Theon’s terrified face peering out from the cage. 

“We’re going home,” she told him and watched as Theon shrieked, “No!” and scrambled back in fear, away from her as she broke the lock. For a fleeting second she called on the Drowned God to slaughter Ramsay Snow, to raise the Weeping Water and wash every Bolton man out of the Dreadfort and to the depths of the sea.

“It’s alright, it’s me, it’s Yara,” she said, climbing in to the cage to reach for Theon. 

“You can’t trick me,” ground out Theon. “Tell him. Tell him you can’t trick me.”

“I’m not tricking you, Theon. I’m saving you,” replied Yara.

“Not Theon, Reek,” he said and Yara lost her patience. They couldn’t be trapped in here. Couldn’t.

She would apologise to him later, she promised herself, but she leaned back and slammed her head into Theon’s face, cutting short his babble. He looked dazed, and she slammed into him again, until his head lolled back, silent now, his eyes vacant. Harran leaned in past her, grabbed her semi-conscious brother and dragged him to his feet, slinging him across his shoulder. 

They had just cleared the door of the kennels when they heard Ramsay’s voice (she assumed it was Ramsay by the fact that he was giving orders to open the kennels, let the hounds after them) and they ran. Ran to the gate, to the guards not ready to fight someone already inside the castle (they died for that unreadiness), ran and ran and ran down to the Weeping Water and the small boat there, slinging Theon’s near-unconscious body into the bottom of the boat and rowed away as the howling of Ramsay’s dogs (and Yara devoutly hoped, Ramsay himself) fell away behind them. 

*****

She had to keep him locked in his cabin. She didn’t want to, but after the third time she had found him trying to steal a boat, to flee over the side, to get back to his Master (because she hadn’t tricked him, she hadn’t tricked him, he knew the Master would come and get him and he wanted the Master to know he hadn’t wanted this), Yara knew that Theon could not be trusted.

She had needed Harran with her the first time she had tried to see what Ramsay had done (she could see the blood still seeping slowly into the rags Theon wore), because he had fought against her like a wildling, all teeth and scratching and thrusting her back away from him, kicking out at her to keep her away. In the end, Harran had had to hit Theon again, a short sharp blow against his cheek that had knocked the fight out of Theon long enough for Yara to be able to peel away the ruined fabric of his shirt, to tug it away from where it clung to unsealed wounds and scabs, wishing she could do this in a way that didn’t hurt but knowing speed was more important. 

Harran, one of the coldest, hardest men she knew, who had paid the Iron Price hundreds of times, cried out as he saw what Ramsay had done to his Prince. This was ruin, the destruction of a man written in wounds and scars that writhed across Theon’s body, the broad flayed trenches across his stomach and the newest of the savage whip marks across his back still open and weeping fluid and blood as they twisted in on themselves, trying to heal. Yara’s fingers traced the X carved deep into Theon’s right shoulder, Ramsay’s brand and sigil, its twin on the other side, and vowed that House Bolton would pay the Iron Price a hundred times for every single scar that Theon wore. 

At her touch, Theon went docile suddenly, the fight gone out of him. Knowing what had been done to him, and wanting to preserve what little of his dignity was left, she sent Harran from the cabin before she removed Theon’s trousers. 

Yara was not one for tears, but she wept silently as she cleaned and dressed Theon’s wounds, and gave him new clothes to wear that he obediently put on at her instruction. His new docility made it easy for her to make sure he ate, sitting next to him as he consumed the food she brought him.

He even let her kiss his forehead and stay with him until he settled into the bed. She had found him sleeping on the floor the first few nights, when he was still too wild to let her touch him, and she had been hoping that giving him time and peace might help. It hadn’t then, but now she sat with him until his breathing slowed and gradually became the even, deep sounds of a sleeping man.

She did not lock the cabin door behind her, but doubled the guard on the small boats slung beside the _ Black Wind’s _ deck.

It did not surprise her when they brought Theon to her in the night. He had tried again, tried to take the boat, to flee from them, back to the Master. 

She did not leave his door unlocked again on the voyage home. 

She had sought to save Theon from being Ramsay’s prisoner and instead had made him hers. 

*****

“He is your son!” Yara shouted at Balon. “Your last living son! He was captured doing what you wanted him to do! More than you wanted! He took Winterfell for you. With twenty men!”

“This isn’t a man,” sneered Balon, looking at Theon, whose vacant eyes stared past Balon without a hint of recognition. “He can’t make heirs. He doesn’t have any value for me. I didn’t ask him to take Winterfell any more than I asked you to rescue him. You might as well put him to the sword for all the good he is now.”

Yara took a long deep breath through her nose, stopped herself from flying at her father in a rage. 

“He’s my brother. Mother loved him. I’m going to take care of him until he gets better. Just… don’t get in my way, father.”

Balon shrugged. “Make sure he doesn’t get in mine and you can do what you want with him,” he responded and walked away without a further word.

Yara organised for Theon to return to his old bedroom in the Sea Tower, his as a child. She could get him there, obediently following her over the bridges, and she thought that there was less chance of him successfully escaping than if she put him in the Bloody Keep. It also kept him further from their father, and that could not be a bad thing. 

The lock on the outside of the door was sturdy, the only key held tight in Yara’s possession, and the window looked out only over a long, sheer drop into the sea. 

It was his childhood bedroom and she made it as warm and comforting and comfortable as she could, but Yara knew that it remained Theon’s prison cell. 

After Theon had gone to the Starks and Rodrik and Maron had been killed, before she went back to the Ten Towers and her death, Alannys Harlaw had no longer been able to sleep. Instead she had wandered the halls of the keeps of Pyke, calling for her lost sons, a living ghost, killed in the Greyjoy Rebellion, although her body lived for a long time after.

Theon was not allowed to walk the halls at night, confined to his chambers by Yara who could sometimes, through desperation and sheer force of will, persuade him to sleep in his bed instead of on the floor.

But in the day, when she could, she took him with her, an empty presence at her side who moved with a shuffling step because of the still healing damage done to his feet. He ate when she told him to, wore what she gave him to wear, sat where she told him to sit, answered the questions she asked him when he could. Her tone, her sharp anger every time he said it finally got him to stop talking about the Master, but she knew he bit it back behind his teeth, long ago flayed into abject deference to whoever he needed to please. 

Sometimes, when he said again, again and then again, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she had to bite down on a scream that tried to force its way out. 

She refused to call him Reek. 

He did not answer to Theon. 

So he became “you” or “little brother”: her nameless shadow that once had been a man. 

Her brother was dead. 

And she had brought his ghost back to haunt the halls of Pyke. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I’m currently watching Season 4 and I had one of those moments of going “what if Yara had been successful in rescuing Theon from Ramsay?” and then another multi-chapter epic decided to lodge itself in my head immediately. I need to get a bit further into watching the show before I can write the next (plot) bit of Gifts, so this is happening in parallel to that.
> 
> But yes, this is the fic where Yara did rescue Theon, but he is at the absolute apogee of his traumatic psychosis and dissociation and has the world’s worst case of Stockholm Syndrome at the point where she rescues him. It is going to be grim for a while (probably for quite a while, actually) but there is hope, Sansa and Theonsa in the future. And Yara now, and while Balon is up there in the world’s worst parent stakes, Yara is a very fucking cool and awesome sister.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He had buried Theon Greyjoy so deeply, under so much blood and pain and screaming and watching other people die in agony, that he couldn’t find him without help.

“Fucking father,” grumbled Yara as she flicked back through the pile of papers, trying to find the one she was looking for. She hated doing Pyke’s accounts but Balon Greyjoy was as useless at keeping them in check as he was at any other part of being King. Or Lord. Whichever he was at the moment. He’d abdicated more than his throne when Thoros of Myr had charged through the breach in the walls of Pyke with his flaming sword all those years ago. 

“Abdicated every fucking ounce of responsibility as well,” Yara went on and looked up into green-blue eyes that tended to remain fixed, somewhat disconcertingly, on her whenever she brought Theon along with her. “As you’d well know,” she said to her brother. She’d taken to talking to him constantly over the last couple of months, not particularly expecting any answers (except for “yes, my Lady” and “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” - the first often leading to the second when she snipped at him for calling her a Lady), but it was that or silence.

Silence was worse. 

“If I don’t get those bridges fixed, none of us will be getting out of the far keeps. Or getting food from the Kitchen Keep with the way that one's going. But stone masons cost a fucking fortune,” she said, finally locating the bill of lading she was looking for, with details of the timber that had been sent over from Great Wyk. “I wish I could talk to you about this properly, little brother,” she said. “Father’s no fucking use - he just fucking moans. Everybody else just wants to talk about when we can go reaving some more in the north, because that’s the only thing fucking father’s told them to do in years. Drowned God, I need to talk to someone about fucking accounts. And fucking bridges. And fucking plumbing. Fuck fuck fuck fuck,” Yara sing-songed, not raising her voice, because she hated the way Theon cringed into himself when she did that. “I know Stark taught you some of this stuff. Some of what you need to do to run a keep. I wish I could talk to you about it.” She scrubbed her hands over her face, leaned back in her chair. “I wish you’d remember your fucking name,” she added.

He said something then, so softly she didn’t hear it. She looked at him again, into that disconcerting blue gaze. “What?” she asked.

“Theon,” he repeated, his voice only just audible. A little louder he said, “My name is Theon Greyjoy. You have to remember your name.”

When Yara went down to the shore sometimes, she would watch the waves crash onto the beach, the foam swirling on top of them. On the days the wind was right, the top of the foam would grow great bubbles, which would split the sunshine into rainbow colours, glittering and fragile spheres, breaking to nothingness at the slightest touch. 

This moment felt like that; as if a wrong move or word could break it, break it into a thousand pieces that could never be put back together again. 

So she moved slowly, reaching her hand forward until the tips of her fingers touched the end of his, the slightest and gentlest of brushes. “Yes,” she said, and smiled, finding herself disturbingly close to the edge of tears. “You’re Theon Greyjoy. You remembered.”

He looked down at where their hands touched, didn’t reach forward but didn’t withdraw either. “You’re Yara Greyjoy,” he said. “You’re not a trick.”

“No, Theon, I’m not a trick,” she replied, barely breathing. 

“You saved me.” He looked like it was new knowledge to him, turning it over in his head, testing it out for truth here in the halls of Pyke where he had lived now for months, and the Master had not come. 

“Yes, Theon,” Yara replied. “I saved you.”

His mouth quirked then, as he looked down at their hands again, something that was almost a smile. “I remembered my name,” he said, and there was something in his voice that could almost have been pride. “You have to remember your name.”

*****

She thought it would be easier once he remembered his name, but it ebbed and flowed, depending on the day. Some days he was Theon and some days he was Reek and she was never quite sure which would be which. 

Until she worked out he needed help to find out who Theon was. He had buried Theon Greyjoy so deeply, under so much blood and pain and screaming and watching other people die in agony, that he couldn’t find him without help. 

And so Yara talked to him. About everything Theon Greyjoy was, everything he had been. On the days he was Theon, they talked of Winterfell and the Starks a great deal and she learned about all the things that the North had made him. When he was Reek, she talked to him of his time in Pyke and Alannys and how much his mother had loved him, loved them all, loved them when their father couldn’t.

Some nights, when the maid she’d installed in the bedchambers nearest his came to fetch her because he had woken screaming, they talked of what Ramsay had done to him. She wished she could unhear those things, unmake those nights, but the words spilled out of him uncontrollably and so she would listen to him until he ground to a trembling exhausted silence. She would stay with him then, until he slept, and then take herself to the kitchens and drink ale until it drowned out the worst of what he had described to her.

He asked for things to do, to keep him here and now in Pyke, not lost inside his head. When she was able to spare the time, she trained with him, as he learned to re-use his sword in a hand missing a finger, to deal with the change in grip strength and balance, to learn to trust his own feet again as they strengthened and healed. 

When she wasn’t there, she let him re-learn old skills, things that helped with his hands, to loosen and stretch the heavy scarring that laced them front and back. He plaited rope and practiced knots, tying and untying them over and over as his fingers grew more supple. He carved and whittled wood to make arrows, fletched them, twisted, reverse-twisted and looped flax fibres to make bowstrings. When she was there to supervise he put them all together, stringing a number of bows to test and filling quiver after quiver with arrows. 

They had thought he might need to rebuild his archery skills but those, it turned out, had stayed with him. The first time she had taken him to the archery butts to try his skills again, he had stood at the line and breathed, drawn and held, let everything else fall away except the centre of the target, released and watched the arrow fly to the central marker. When a quiver full of arrows stood out from the target, all within the central circle, the smile he turned on Yara was not just Theon, but the old Theon, proud and almost arrogant.

He didn’t ask her to trust him and she kept his door locked from the outside at night.

*****

They were speaking of Winterfell again, Theon telling her of some ludicrous task that Robb Stark dared him to do, when Theon’s face suddenly twisted and he stopped speaking. He looked down at his hands and then back up at Yara. “They told me,” he said. “That he’s dead. That Robb is dead. Lord Bolton,” he breathed, his face twisting again. “Lord Bolton killed him. Betrayed him.”

Yara considered Theon’s face for a while and then nodded. “Yes,” she replied. “Bolton betrayed him. Bolton and Walder Frey. They call it the Red Wedding. They killed him and his men under guest right.”

Theon looked down at his hands, didn’t let anything show on his face. “I should have died with him,” he said softly. “I should never have betrayed him.”

“No,” said Yara sharply and a pang of something that may have been guilt shot through her chest, remembering suddenly how she had taunted Theon when he’d returned to Pyke the first time, uselessly desperate to keep first place in Balon’s affections. “You chose your family, Theon. The Starks were your captors, you their prisoner. No matter how well they treated you.”

He looked at her again, then away. There was no part of him that would allow him to argue with her, all those pieces flayed away, but for the first time since his return, he didn’t agree with her. “He was my friend, Yara,” he said softly.

“Yes,” she said finally, an exhalation on a long breath. “He was your friend. I’m sorry that he died, Theon. I’m not sorry that you didn’t die with him. I’m not sorry that I still have you.”

He did not look at her again, but eventually he nodded. 

*****

She had fought against calling Theon to them, but when it came down it, Balon Greyjoy was the King of the Iron Islands. When he shouted around her at the guards to go and fetch Theon, the guards did as their King commanded and Theon was delivered to the audience chamber to stand before Balon and a seething Yara. 

“Well, boy,” said Balon, looking over Theon, who wouldn’t look at his father. “We’ve got a letter. From your… _ Master _.”

She saw it only because she was watching him so closely, the shiver that ran the length of Theon’s body, but he didn’t say anything. 

“He sent us this,” added Balon, when he realised that Theon wasn’t going to respond. He gestured at the table, where a parcel lay opened, the contents spilled across the table where Yara had dropped it once she’d realised what it was. It looked like a short cape of tanned leather, until the small tattoo made you realise that it was the skin from a fat man’s back, flayed off in one piece. 

“_Balon Greyjoy, Lord of the Iron Islands and invader of the north_,” Balon read from the letter that had accompanied the parcel. “_I have taken Moat Cailin from your garrison. They were weak, as all you krakens are on land. I would say you have no bones, but I have found enough of them inside of your men to litter the field in front of Moat Cailin white with them. Perhaps I should wear their skins as cloaks, so you can remember how many of your men I have killed and flayed since they came here to the North. I could outfit a garrison with the cloaks of your men and have spares left for their women to wear. _

_ Tell your daughter bitch that she should have left me my Reek. I had thought to use him to get the Moat Cailin garrison to surrender. You might have got sixty of your men back if she had left him with me. It’s not like you have any use for him, now. Maybe I can come to Pyke and get you an heir on your daughter bitch instead. _

_ I want my Reek. Give him back to me or I shall hunt down the last of the Ironborn in the North and send them to you in pieces. Tell him to come back to his Master. Send my Reek to Winterfell. We go there now, the keep that my Reek won for me. _

_ Ramsay Bolton _

_ Trueborn Lord of Winterfell” _

“You should have left him there,” said Balon contemptuously, flinging the letter onto the table. “I could have used those sixty men. More than I can use him.”

“You left them,” ground out Yara. “They won Moat Cailin for you. They controlled passage to the North. And you didn’t support them, you didn’t supply them, you didn’t reinforce them. Of course the garrison fell. You don’t know how to win a war, father. You only know how to lose them.”

“I could have got them back,” replied Balon, stubbornly. He hadn’t taken responsibility for anything that had happened since he lost to Robert Baratheon and he wasn’t about to start now.

“No.”

It was said so softly that it could barely be heard but it stopped both Balon and Yara dead. Yara turned to look at Theon, but he had locked his eyes on Balon.

“No,” repeated Theon. “He would never have given them back to you. Dagmer Cleftjaw surrendered Winterfell to him on promise of safe passage and the… Ramsay flayed them all and sacked the keep. He would never have let the men at Moat Cailin back. They were dead as soon as they believed him.”

Balon stared at Theon, at first astonished but then his eyes narrowed. “And why should I trust your word on that?” he said harshly. “You called him Master, boy. You’re Ironborn and you called him Master. You were too weak to keep Winterfell.”

“He likes it,” replied Theon. A shudder ran through him then. “Loves it. He likes to see men bleed. Roose… is cold. He wants power. Ramsay wants to make the world bleed.”

Balon made a noise, harsh with anger. “Get him out of my sight,” he said to Yara and she took Theon’s arm and led him away from their father. 

They ended up in a small room in the Bloody Keep where they often talked, a warm and quiet place. 

“You don’t believe him, do you?” Theon asked Yara, quietly. 

“That he wouldn’t have killed the garrison? No,” replied Yara. “I saw… I saw what Ramsay did to you. You’re right - he likes it.”

“He showed me Dagmer,” said Theon. “Afterwards. When he had me at the Dreadfort. He kept his skin. He had a room. Under the Dreadfort. He showed me what he kept in there.” Theon’s mouth worked, his teeth worrying at his lips and cheeks in memory. “You don’t ever want to see what he kept in there.” 

“No,” said Yara. “I don’t ever want to see.” She took a drink of her ale, needing the reassurance of the fact that the world went on and she was home and safe in Pyke and Ramsay Bolton wasn’t coming to take her brother and get an heir on her. “He’s Ramsay Bolton now,” she said, suddenly realising. 

Theon nodded. “Roose said he’d think about it, if Ramsay gave him Moat Cailin.”

“You don’t...,” said Yara. “You’re not calling him Master,” she finished.

“He’s not,” said Theon. “He’s not my Master.”

“You're not going back, Theon,” said Yara, fervently. “You escaped and you’re never going back. Never. No matter what he threatens, I won’t let him take you ever again.”

Theon nodded. “I’m never going back,” he said and for the first time since she’d stolen him from Ramsay’s kennels, Yara believed him. 

They stayed together for the day, quietly talking, slowly turning from Ramsay’s letter to more mundane matters relating to Pyke. Yara took Theon back to his bedchambers that night and stayed with him as he settled into his bed (and he slept in his bed far more often than not these days) and didn’t leave until he had fallen into a deep sleep. 

She kissed his forehead as she left the room and, for the first time, did not lock the door behind her. 

In the morning, Theon Greyjoy still walked the halls of Pyke. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yes, I am doing that thing where I’m taking bits out of the books and the shows and melding them where it seems appropriate (noting that continuity, characters etc. are all very much based on the show). 
> 
> Also, getting inside Ramsay’s head to write that letter is... horrifying.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Sansa.” Theon’s voice was low and hoarse. “He’s marrying Sansa Stark.” His face was parchment white and Yara could see his hands beneath the table, trembling wildly.

She hadn’t been sure how the sea voyage would affect him, but from a couple of days out of Pyke, it was like he was growing by inches every day. Expanding to fill his own skin. Like every breath of sea air was making him healthier and more wholly Theon Greyjoy. 

Yara had worried that her younger brother, gone so long from the sea, would not know what to do on a longship, would be a burden and thus a laughing stock to the other Ironborn. She hadn’t wanted to kill all her crew, but she had vowed to the Drowned God that she would if they had driven Theon back to being Reek, because he didn’t know how to furl a mainsail or reef a topsail or tie off cargo in a squall. She rarely wore her sword on deck, but for the first few days out of the docks at Lordsport, it rode at her hip, waiting for someone to laugh at Theon so she could show them exactly what that would cost them. 

Rodrik and Maron, if she was honest, had been dreadful to Theon, treating their little brother with the same mix of contempt, sly beatings and indifference they had their utterly unloved sister (because what Ironborn would ever care about a weak little girl, no matter how fiercely she scowled at them?). But they had (and it was the only redeeming feature she could name) been good at teaching both of their siblings how to sail. They had done it under protest and only because none of the Greyjoy siblings had been able to totally defy their mother’s wishes, but they had done it well. She remembered the trips with them just off the coast of Pyke in the small dinghies where she had learned the basics of sailing a vessel and then the transition to a longship and the complex work involved in sailing such a large vessel. 

Theon had not got far into that education, though she vaguely remembered him running around the deck of a ship on sturdy little legs, excitedly watching the sea and the sailors. She wondered if he had found a way to keep on sailing in the north, or whether it was because he’d had enough time on the _ Sea Bitch _to bring it all back. Either way, he was proving to be a competent crew member, enough that the other Ironborn simply absorbed him into their activities without comment.

It allowed her to stop wearing her sword and for that she was grateful. The damned thing tended to get in the way when they were sailing.

Theon’s demeanour barely changed when they anchored off the northern coast, slipped onto shore on the tender. Her raven had obviously got through as a man waited on shore for them, with enough horses for the small party Yara wanted to take to Deepwood Motte. The short trip was relatively uneventful, but there were moments, mostly when someone was crashing through the trees, when she would notice the skin tighten suddenly across Theon’s cheeks, the colour drain from his face. But the moments were swift and Theon would simply set his jaw and silently follow onwards. 

It changed when they rode in under the walls of the Motte, greeted by the Ironborn garrison that held it for her. She was watching Theon out of the corner of her eye and watched him shrink inside himself, his shoulders rounding, his face white and tense. It wasn’t the Dreadfort or even Winterfell, but obviously it was enough of a Northern keep to bring back thoughts of what had been done to him. He didn’t break down, though, and silently dismounted and followed Yara into the audience hall to meet the garrison commander. 

Yara managed, subtly, to arrange the seating to be able to keep Theon in the corner of her eye as she talked to the commander. 

“Ramsay Bolton has taken Winterfell back,” she started bluntly. “He plans to rebuild the burned sections and be named Warden of the North. Since Moat Cailin was lost, the Bolton forces have taken back most of the North.”

“Weak fuckers,” responded Darrick Volmark, the commander. “The Northern lords switch allegiance faster than whores do, and for less coin. Didn’t Bolton kill their King in the North? And then they bend the knee to the usurper.”

Yara shrugged. “Their fights aren’t ours,” she said. “But the Bolton bastard,’ (she watched the shiver pass through Theon at those words), “holds Winterfell now. He took Moat Cailin and slaughtered the Ironborn there. Flayed them all. He wants the Ironborn out of the North.”

Darrick stared at Yara and then spat onto the floor of the chamber. “What are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying,” replied Yara, “that Lord Balon didn’t reinforce Moat Cailin. Or re-supply it. And it fell and Ironborn died. I will do what I can to support you, but you’re far from home here and father will not appreciate any attempts to bring you more men. My brother,” she nodded at Theon, “paid the price for that indifference at Winterfell. Ralf Kenning did the same at Moat Cailin. There is reaving that can be done elsewhere than the North.”

“You want us to walk away from this?” replied Darrick, his eyebrows raised and his laughter was mocking. “We’ve got a keep here, and salt wives to keep us warm and the Bolton bastard is hardly likely to pay attention to us for now. He’s planning his wedding. And I doubt he’d go anywhere until he’s sure he’s got himself an heir on her. Not until she’s too good and fat to run away from him.”

“His wedding?” Yara stared at Darrick, taken aback. “Who on earth would agree to marry that bloodthirsty fucker?”

Darrick shrugged. “The Stark girl. The older one. Maybe she thinks Bolton’s better than the dwarf she married down south. Cock’ll be bigger, anyway.”

“Sansa.” Theon’s voice was low and hoarse. “He’s marrying Sansa Stark.” His face was parchment white and Yara could see his hands beneath the table, trembling wildly. 

Darrick nodded. “Some Southern lord dumped her up here, but from what I’ve been told, she’s eager enough to marry the Bolton bastard. She probably doesn’t know about his nasty little habits yet.” Darrick grinned. “Probably find out soon enough. Only so many flayed bodies Roose can bury before people outside the family see them. You heard what Ramsay did to House Cerwyn?”

Yara shook her head, barely paying attention to Darrick, watching the trembling spread up from Theon’s hands, his teeth beginning to worry at his lips. 

“Supposed to collect his taxes from them, but I figure Medger Cerwyn told him no. Got his taxes in the end, though - Cley said yes once his Lord, his uncle and his mother were hanging from the gibbets. Without their skin, of course. Guess it’s part of being a bastard. Likes showing his daddy he really believes in the flaying thing.”

“Darrick,” said Yara abruptly. “I need to speak to my brother in private. Are my old chambers still empty?”

‘Sure,” said Darrick. “Haven’t been aired for a while, but don’t smell worse than a few wet sailors.”

Yara didn’t respond, standing swiftly. Her grip on Theon’s elbow was hard and she almost dragged him behind her, rapidly making her way to her old chambers. They were musty with disuse, but they had a garderobe and she got Theon to it in time. It was too small for her to fit in there with him, so she paced the bedchamber rapidly as she listened to him vomiting for what felt like hours but was probably only minutes. 

When he came out he was so frenetic that Yara actually sat on the bed, trying to calm him by reducing her own energy. He didn’t even notice, frantically pacing back and forth across the room, his body trembling, chewing at his lips desperately, his hands flexing and curling over and over. 

“Theon,” said Yara. “Theon, stay with me. You need to stay with me. You need to talk to me. You can’t go away.”

That seemed to make some impression on him and while his frantic pacing did not slow, he managed to look at Yara, stop the worst of the chewing on his lips. “Yara,” he said. “Yara. He’s got Sansa. Sansa! She’s just a little girl. She’s just - she hadn’t even flowered when she went south. She’s just - Robb loved her so much. She was his favourite. He’s got Sansa. Sansa.”

“Theon, stay with me,” said Yara again. “She’s not a little girl any more. It’s been years. She’s a grown woman now. She’s been married already. To a Lannister. To the bloody Imp! She’s not going to be a maiden anymore. She survived Cersei fucking Lannister. And Tywin and that little fucker Joffrey. She’s not the little girl you remember.”

“It’s Ramsay,” responded Theon, still frantic. “Ramsay. Not a Lannister. It’s Ramsay. You don’t know him… it’s worse. It’s always worse. You don’t know, Yara. She’s just… it’s Sansa. Robb would have killed everyone between Winterfell and King’s Landing to get her back. What he’d think. It’s Ramsay.” Theon’s sentences got shorter and more frantic, his hands rubbing at his arms. 

Yara couldn’t stand it any longer and finally stood and caught him, making him stand still, his face caught in her hands, making him look at her. “She’s valuable,” she said. “Not just to Ramsay. To Roose. Ramsay needs to keep her alive and healthy and to make heirs on her. And Roose needs to keep her alive to increase his hold on the North. Roose will keep Ramsay on a leash around her. It won't be the same as you. He can’t do those things with her. He can’t hunt her. He can’t flay her. He can’t damage her. And if he can’t damage her, getting heirs on her probably isn’t going to be much worse than half a dozen other lords would be. Drowned God, Theon, she’s probably safer with Ramsay than she ever was with the Lannisters. Joffrey nearly had her killed every time Robb won a battle. Cersei thinks she killed Joffrey in league with the Imp - she’d send the Mountain after Sansa to rape her to death if she could find her. The Lannisters could kill her any time they wanted to, once Robb was dead and they weren’t going to do it in a nice way. Ramsay needs to keep her in one piece. She’s safe from the Mountain with him, Ramsay needs to keep Roose on side and he needs Northern heirs from a Stark to strengthen their claim to be Wardens of the North. It's not you, Theon. He can’t do to Sansa what he did to you. Do you understand, Theon?”

It took longer than she had hoped and she wasn’t sure whether it was exhaustion more than rational thought that got him there in the end, but eventually Theon conceded Yara’s points. Or at least said he did and managed to stop trembling and pacing and that would have to do. 

She’d planned to stay a few nights at the Motte, make a real effort to persuade Darrick to bring the garrison home, but the news about Sansa changed her mind. She couldn’t trust Theon not to do something stupid and locking him up in a Northern keep seemed like a really bad fucking idea in the state he was in. 

So after a further short conversation with Darrick, she gathered her men back together and headed back towards the coast. When they had to make camp, she made sure the men on watch knew to keep an eye on Theon, to make sure that he remained firmly ensconced in his bedroll until morning. But while he didn’t sleep well (his restlessness enough to keep her half-awake from where she slept, her bedroll next to his), he didn’t try and leave in the night either and that was enough to make Yara sigh in relief. She wouldn’t admit it, but his reaction to the news about Sansa Stark had made her fear he would recede straight back into being Reek and to try and get back to his Master in Winterfell.

His hold on it was more fragile than it had been in months, since before Moat Cailin, but it was definitely Theon Greyjoy who rode with the Ironborn to the coast and boarded _ Black Wind_. 

The sea voyage seemed to have the same effect it had on the way up the coast, and Theon seemed much more himself by the time they returned to Pyke.

It was only a few days after their return, however, that he found Yara where she was working on both ship manifests and a tankard of ale. The look on his face made her sigh and set aside her ale. 

“What do you want, Theon?” she asked. 

He looked down at his hands, twisting them together. “I want to know if it’s true,” he asked. “If Ramsay has Sansa Stark. If she agreed to marry him.”

Yara stared at him for a while. “You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?” she asked at last. 

He shook his head mutely. “What would I do?” he responded, eventually. 

Yara gripped the back of Theon’s neck suddenly, felt the flinch run through his whole body. “Promise me,” she said fiercely, “_Promise me _ that you’ll stay with me, Theon. That if I find out what you want, you won’t go back to being Reek. I need you, Theon. Will you stay with me?” 

He nodded, the slightest movement of his head, and she increased the intensity of her grip. “_Will you stay with me?_” she asked again and he raised his eyes to her. She held her breath for a moment, and then he nodded, for the first time as if he believed it. 

She smiled and, leaning forward, kissed his forehead. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said. 

*****

There weren’t many ravens flying between the Iron Islands and the North these days, as Balon’s second failed rebellion fell apart in his hands. But Yara still had a few people she could contact and she sent her request outwards.

It took some time for a response to come back and it was short and sharp, but told her what she needed to know. She contemplated the response for a while and then made her way to Theon’s chambers, deciding it was probably best to tell him somewhere where he was comfortable. 

He looked up from the chair where he was reading when she arrived, his eyes dropping to the parchment in her hand. “Sansa?” he asked, his voice hoarse. 

Yara nodded. “He has her. They married a few weeks ago. They were married in the Godswood in front of a septon and Roose Bolton, and Sansa agreed to the marriage. There hasn’t been much word of her since the wedding but,” Yara shrugged. “He’s probably keeping her close until he gets an heir on her. There’s not much news of any kind getting out of Winterfell.”

Theon nodded. She had wondered whether he would fall apart at the news, but he had obviously been expecting it, had steeled himself for it. 

“What do you want to do now?” she asked him. “I’m not sending Ironborn men there to try and save her, if you were thinking of asking. We’re losing in the North and I’m not wasting men trying to take Winterfell again. Not for a fucking Stark.”

“I know,” said Theon. “I wouldn’t ask. But.” He stopped for a while, staring down at the book in his hands, without seeing it. Eventually he looked back up at Yara. “May I send a message to Jon Snow? At Castle Black. He needs to know. He’s her brother. He’s Lord Commander there. He needs to know what Ramsay is. Maybe he can help her.”

Yara nodded. The Maester always had a raven for Castle Black, although the Ironborn hadn’t sent a message there for many years (she wondered if there’d been even one since Lord Commander Hoare had refused to march his men to Harrenhal to save his brother from Targaryen dragonfire). “Write something and I’ll send it for you,” she said and when Theon went back to staring sightlessly at the volume in his hands, she eventually withdrew. 

*****

The message had been sent to Castle Black days before. Yara had kept a close eye on Theon since she’d received the raven telling her of Sansa’s fate, but although he was even more subdued than usual, there was no sign of Reek returning. She wondered what he would do if Jon Snow replied, requested help, rejected the message, whatever, but no raven returned from the Wall. 

Slowly, everything returned to as close to normal as it ever was in Pyke, with Yara trying to clean up Balon’s messes and Theon trailing behind her, slowly finding ways to make himself more and more useful to her.

She wondered later if it was deliberate, if Theon had learned enough dissembling when he was with Ramsay to fool her completely, or whether it was a decision made on the spur of the moment. 

One morning Theon was not there. 

She sent the guards through to search Pyke from top to bottom, then Lordsport, then to fan out across Pyke. She even wondered whether he had jumped from the window to his death, but she knew the currents brought the bodies back to shore quickly and no corpse floated in on the tide. She sent the Iron Fleet out, found every ship that had sailed from Pyke when Theon disappeared, but he wasn’t on any of them.

It was only later, when she thought to ask other questions of the ship’s captains that she found her answer. The boat was a smallish trading vessel, not an Iron Island ship. But it had left early in the morning that Theon had disappeared. The captain swore he had taken no passengers, but a small boat had vanished from the deck of his ship the night before he docked in Seagard. 

Yara’s swearing was impressive and impressively loud when she was told of this. But it didn’t change what had happened.

Theon Greyjoy had fled from Pyke. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry. Grim. All the grim. Which is why I’m going to go and finish a chapter of Gifts to cheer myself up. 
> 
> I’m back at work after a few weeks on holidays, and work is likely to be very busy for the next few weeks, so writing is a bit slower than I want, so I’ll do preemptive apologies now for gaps in the arrival of chapters.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was the thought of Robb, of saving Sansa because that was what Robb would ask of him, that kept him from turning his horse back.

He had found a tiny back room in a loud and busy inn, full of travellers, in Seagard; the kind of place where a quiet man was unlikely to be noticed. Theon only paid for the one night, needing just enough time there to decide on his next course of action; he could manage no longer anyway, the feeling of so many strangers so close like needles under his skin.

He discarded the thought of riding to Winterfell from Seagard as soon as he thought of it. He would have to travel through open, well-populated land controlled by the Boltons and he knew that Ramsay would not, would never, stop hunting him. Enough Bolton men knew Theon (_he was not Reek, he had promised Yara he was not Reek_) that the risk of being discovered and delivered back to Ramsay made travelling overland impossible. 

So his choice was how to travel by sea. He had the small boat he had stolen tucked away in a quiet cove far enough away from the port that it should remain unnoticed, and he could make his way up to Barrowton by hugging the coast. Which would mean he would have the boat at hand if (_when!_) he returned with Sansa and a guaranteed escape.

It was too slow. He knew it would be too slow. It would take him months to get to Barrowton that way, and Sansa would be in Ramsay’s hands all that time.

He could not leave her to wait that long.

She would not survive that long. Not as Sansa Stark, anyway.

Yara had given him an allowance when he was there in Pyke, appropriate to his station as Prince. He had had nothing to spend it on there, so it made his purse heavy when he had fled from Pyke. He was sure Balon would have had some scathing remark to make about buying passage on a ship, but a smile ghosted Theon’s lips as he considered Yara’s likely views. He could almost hear her say_ “Iron Price? Fucking Iron Price. Not like you pay the Iron Price every time you pay for your fucking breakfast.”_

So he made his way to the docks in the morning, keeping himself well away from any Ironborn ships that were currently in port. His clothing was nondescript, purchased secondhand in Seagard, and he stuffed the empty little finger of his glove, trying to ensure he wouldn’t meet any description Yara might circulate.

It took him a little while to identify which ships were sailing to Barrowton and longer to determine which one was definitely running at least two crew members short (Theon presumed at least one, if not both, had left when they arrived at port, as they so often did). In the end, he allowed himself a small smile at thwarting Balon Greyjoy’s contempt, as he brought his meagre possessions (including his well-wrapped and well-hidden Ironborn armour) on board in a couple of small packs, no coins changing hands. Instead, he joined the crew in undertaking the tasks needed to prepare the ship to sail and quickly impressed the captain that he’d made the right decision to take his experience on trust.

Theon found the passage from Seagard to Barrowton restored some sense of himself. It had taken every ounce of his courage to leave Pyke, to defy Yara’s wishes, and his short time in the crowded confines of Seagard had nearly been enough to send him scuttling back to her, to beg forgiveness. But the sea and salt air, the crew’s acceptance of his efficiently taciturn ways and the knowledge that no-one in Westeros knew where Theon Greyjoy was meant that he arrived in Barrowton, just under a fortnight later, with renewed purpose.

The few coins the captain tipped into his hand as he left the ship were enough for a meal in a local tavern and to hire a small room for an hour; long enough to change into his Ironborn clothing and armour, put on a semblance of the old Theon Greyjoy. Someone who gave the appearance of an arrogant Ironborn lord left the back door of the tavern, made his way to an armourer he’d heard about long ago. In short order, Theon had kitted himself out with a functional sword, a recurve bow (he preferred a longbow, but it was too awkward to ride through the Wolfswood carrying its great length), a quiver of arrows and a few other items he needed. He bargained hard enough that the coin he had left meant the horse he bought on the way out of town was unlikely to go lame as soon as he left the roads, and came with basic tack.

He followed the north road out of town, until he lost sight of the outermost buildings and then struck out into the harsh stony Barrowlands, taking the straightest path he could manage towards Torrhen’s Square. Theon had brought few supplies with him, but he had lost none of his hunting skills and rabbits and small game kept him well fed. He didn’t press his horse hard, not willing to risk laming it in the stony lands, and used his Ironborn skills with knots and twine to turn his two small packs into saddlebags that hung neatly from his saddle.

He steered wide of Torrhen’s Square itself, barely seeing a soul on his long journey, and those he saw were far in the distance. It was more than a month before he reached the edges of the Wolfswood and plunged into it. It had been a strange and lonely journey across the Barrowlands, but Theon felt his heart lift as he rode beneath the tall trees. He was no greenlander, but some of the best days of his life had been spent within this wood; hunting for small and large game, honing his skills with his bow, laughing with Robb over campfires, fucking pretty young girls. And not so pretty not so young farmer’s wives, for that matter; Theon hadn’t exactly discriminated when it came to fucking. So many things he had loved were lost to him now, but riding into the Wolfswood he could almost pretend that Robb was just beyond the next rise in the ground, waiting for Theon to come with his bow and take down some ridiculous sized boar or swift rabbit with his unerring accuracy.

He clung to those memories as he rode closer to Winterfell, closer to Ramsay, using them as a way to stop himself thinking about what he was doing. It was the thought of Robb, of saving Sansa because that was what Robb would ask of him, that kept him from turning his horse back. It was the thought of Robb that stopped him fleeing back to the safety of Pyke as the snow on the ground between the trees grew thicker, as the air grew more and more chill. It was the thought of Robb that kept him from turning north, heading to Castle Black to try and pass the responsibility for saving Sansa on to Jon Snow. It was the thought of Robb that brought him to the edge of the Wolfswood, far closer to Ramsay Bolton than he had ever again planned to be in his life.

Winterfell was not his home. It had never been his home; Catelyn Stark, at the least, had made that very clear to Theon. But he had lived so much of his life there that he knew the location of all of the smallholdings that existed within a few hours ride of the keep, and his time as Reek meant that he knew many were likely to have lost their inhabitants. Ramsay’s endless need to inflict inventive cruelty had denuded many smallholdings around the Dreadfort of families. So Theon rode from smallholding to smallholding, turning away as soon as he saw smoke, but it did not take too long before he came upon a holding where it appeared the hearth was cold. He rode up to the house cautiously, but he lost that caution when the stench from within it rose over even the cold. Whatever had killed the inhabitants had not removed them and that was all the investigation Theon planned to make of that.

What interested him more was the small enclosure that lay to the side of the house. A rill ran at the corner of it, and it was that which had undoubtedly kept the two horses within it, thin and bedraggled, alive. Theon had a small amount of hard feed in his saddlebags for his horse: scattering some of that just within the gate meant that within a few moments he had made two new friends. They liked him even more when he found the small lean-to beside the house that housed the cut hay that had obviously been laid in to get the horses through winter. The cold had kept the hay from getting mouldy and soon all three horses were happily eating hay within the yard.

He knew it was the riskiest part of what he sketchily called a plan, but there was no way he could take a horse with him to Winterfell, and all he could hope for was that he could get Sansa out swiftly and that no-one would take the horses before he returned with her. If he could and had a horse for her, it would be a stroke of luck beyond any he could imagine.

He scattered as much hay as he could widely around the enclosure, to try and keep the horses alive until he returned and then rearranged his supplies into a small pack. Slinging his bow and quiver across his shoulder, his sword on his hip, he set out on the walk to Winterfell.

Theon knew the land around the keep better than anyone residing inside its walls and he was able to get to within a half mile without being seen and settled into a small hollow within a copse of trees to wait until nightfall. When nightfall came, and the gates to the keep were shut, Theon cautiously made his way closer to the walls, his feet wrapped in rags to blur his footprints in the snow. 

He had learned to wait patiently, silently, when he hunted and he used that skill now to rest in the deepest shadow he could find close to the walls, to wait and watch where the shadows fell, and the movement of the guards upon the walls. He waited until what he judged was the hour of the owl and then made his way to the place where a tower jutted out from the battlements, made a corner where the shadows were as black as pitch. He drew the grappling hook and rope from within his pack and prepared, once more, to assault Winterfell’s walls. 

He knew Ramsay understood how he’d successfully entered the castle before. But Theon could not help but think that Ramsay would never imagine that Theon (_not Reek!_) would ever return as long as it was held by the Boltons. And besides, he had no intention of repeating his actions of opening the postern gate to an invading force. Theon wanted in, and only in, to Winterfell.

His long observation meant he knew no guards would patrol this area for some time and this was confirmed when there was no response to the clang of the grappling hooks prongs catching upon the battlement edge. Cat-like and soft, Theon climbed up the walls of Winterfell, landed softly within the battlements, drew his rope up after him, storing hook and rope away in his pack. As it turned to the hour of the wolf, he made his soft, silent way through the shadows atop Winterfell’s walls, into the Broken Tower, to the top, meeting no-one on his way. The room at the top of the tower was broken open, half-exposed to the air, rubble still strewn across the floor. Theon picked his way carefully to the edge of the broken wall, sliding his feet to ensure he didn’t fall over the stones that he couldn’t see in the darkest hour of the night. 

By the time the sun rose the next morning, he had settled quietly into place, able to watch the whole of Winterfell without being seen. He was reassured when the only disturbance he could see within the dirt and cobwebs and half-melted snow that coated the floor were the marks of his own feet. The top of the Broken Tower, as it was when the Starks had ruled Winterfell, remained an abandoned wreck.

For three days he watched the rhythms of Winterfell unfold beneath him, noting which parts of the keep had been restored, which parts were still marked by Ramsay’s sacking. He watched the guards carefully, working out their patrols and when they changed, sleeping little so he could watch what happened in the darkest hours. Most importantly of all, he watched the meals that were taken from the kitchen, followed lights in windows, watched Ramsay’s dark hair far beneath him (_not the Master!_) as he crossed from one part of the keep to the other and then back again hours later in the night. Theon barely moved even when snow dusted over him, except in the deep night when he knew no-one could see him, when he would stretch and move his limbs, eat the hardtack biscuits he had brought with him from Pyke, drink sparingly from his waterskin.

It was a hunt longer than any he’d undertaken before, took patience he hadn’t known he’d possessed but after three nights he was certain he knew where Ramsay was keeping Sansa prisoner.

On the fourth day, everything changed. Winterfell suddenly bustled, men at arms gathering, horses gathering, the Bolton forces suddenly busying themselves with preparation for war. Then the gates were opened and, Ramsay at their head, he and the majority of his men rode away from the keep.

Theon had no idea where they had gone, nor to what purpose. But he also knew that, unexpectedly, the best chance he could ever have to rescue Sansa had suddenly been presented to him.

He waited until the hour of the bat, when the keep slept and the moon barely glimmered overhead before he took his pack, slung on his sword, bow and quiver and left the Broken Tower. To avoid the guard’s hall, he kept to the battlements and only descended the stairs of the tower near the Great Keep, treading down them as softly as he had ascended the wall days before. His nerves were taut with fear that some servant returning from an assignation would come across him, or that some guard would have changed their patrol since the men at arms had left, but his luck held as he left the battlements and made his way to the Great Keep.

The door was locked, of course, but Theon had been sneaking in and out of the Great Keep since he’d discovered the pleasures of Wintertown’s whores, and the small iron tool he’d brought with him, a modified awl, swiftly opened the lock. The Keep’s halls were quiet and dark behind the door, which he softly closed behind him. He was surefooted and silent in the dark, knowing the feel of each stone beneath his foot, the shape of the wall beneath his hand. Theon suddenly thought of how much Catelyn Stark had despised the fact that he managed to get to Wintertown so often under her nose, and how her mouth would purse at the thought that he was using those same skills, that hard-won knowledge, to rescue her daughter. His nerves were drawn so tightly that his brief grin was a ghastly rictus.

He made his way up the stairs and along the hallways, till he came to the bedchamber that he was sure Sansa was held in. For a long moment he stared at the outline of the door, visible now his eyes had adjusted to the dark, desperately wanting to unlock it, to get Sansa out, to go _now_, his every nerve jangling with fear now that his goal was so close in sight. But he held the last, fragile end of his nerve, knowing that, if he hadn’t watched Ramsay ride out this morning, he may not have been able to do it. It was still too early in the night, a few servants still out banking the fires and closing the keeps, the guard patrol not as he wanted it.

He needed to be sure the whole keep slept, that he could be where he wanted to be when the guards were where he wanted. So, instead of Sansa’s door, he unpicked the door beside it, was pleased to see, as he expected, that it was empty and undisturbed. The thick layer of dust his feet disturbed (and his efforts to suppress the sneeze it nearly caused were heroic) convinced him that there probably hadn’t been anyone in it since Ramsay burned Winterfell.

So he moved carefully into the room, found a small stool that he moved to beside the door, put down his pack and carefully sat down.

Theon had learned, in his long captivity, to go within himself, to find a blank space where he could wait without thinking, without feeling, ready to react if Ramsay asked anything of him, but otherwise trying not to even exist. It was a still and silent place, where he disturbed nothing and no-one, a place where even the most alert servant passing by should not hear or notice anything in the small room next to (_he was sure!_) Sansa.

So he went there now, sinking down into the silent place inside his mind.

Reek was waiting for him there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this took a long time to write because it was the logistics chapter. If you ever need to know distances in the North, how long ships take to sail (all the different kind of ships), travelling speeds of a single rider on horseback, what bits of Winterfell connect to other bits of Winterfell, what different sort of bows existed in medieval times, why sailors were the guys who knew about grappling hooks and so and so forth, I am now totally your girl. I have links to ALL of the things :)
> 
> But yes, I can’t help myself. Unlike D&D, I have no interest in magic travel times or ships that apparently take shortcuts across land - I want my logistics to be reasonably realistic. Which means all the research!
> 
> Also, Australia is currently on fire and I’m hiding in my house from unbreathable air, so I should hopefully get Season 8 finished soon (despite my extremely social Christmas!).


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ~It’s easy. Being Reek. You just have to do what the Master wants. He loves you. And Reek loves the Master.~
> 
> The last words went in like a knife in his heart, painful and twisting. If he hadn’t needed so badly to keep silent, Theon would have gasped at the feel of them slicing him open, the shame and truth and falseness of them all mixed together.

_ ~It rhymes with wreak.~ _

_ ~It rhymes with leek.~ _

_ ~It rhymes with freak.~ _

He had become used to the litany in his head, the reminder of what Ramsay had made him into, flayed him into. 

_ ~It rhymes with sneak.~ _

_ ~It rhymes with leak.~ _

It crept into his head again, slowly and softly on cat’s feet, the sing-song voice that had been part of him for so long, necessary for so long, that he barely noticed as the silence was filled with its cadences. 

_ ~Reek.~ _

_ ~It rhymes with meek.~ _

_ ~It rhymes with bleak.~ _

_ ~It rhymes with weak.~ _

_ ~NO!~ _

He nearly shouted it into the dark and the silence, the sleeping rhythms of Winterfell, catching himself only at the last moment as he realised what was in his head.

_ ~No.~ _ The thought was quieter, the litany initially silenced. ~ _ I’m Theon. Theon Greyjoy. Not… I’m Theon Greyjoy.~ _

There was silence in his head then, the quiet space where he was nothing and no-one, just a space in the dark and the cold and the quiet, until the next thought emerged with the ardent compulsion of a lover whispering his name in the dark. 

_ ~The Master is coming back. He’ll hurt you. You deserve to be hurt.~ _

Theon shuddered on his seat, felt the cold climb up his back, the fear climb up his back. _ ~No,~ _ he thought. _ ~No. I won’t… let him hurt me.~ _

_ ~He will catch you,~ _ said the voice in his head. ~ _ He knows you’re here. It’s a trick that he rode away. He’s waiting for you and he’ll catch you and then he’ll have to hurt you because you let them take you.~ _

When Theon had been a boy in Winterfell, he had filled his head always with words. That he was a lord’s son (a king’s son, really), that he was important and clever, that Robb and the other Stark children looked up to him, that he was smarter than all of them, that he was heir to the Iron Islands, the best archer, that his role as ward made him one of the most important people in both the North and the Iron Islands, the heir that was key to peace in Westeros, (and when he grew old enough) that he was the one that women wanted to fuck, famous for his inventive skill in bed and his serious cock. He filled his head with the words that kept the smile Lady Catelyn hated on his lips and that covered over the other words that lurked beneath them; that he was a hostage and powerless and if his father did not love him (and Balon had never shown the slightest sign of doing so) then the man that was raising him (the man who had taken him from his mother and his home) would take off his head and that no-one would miss him, no-one would mourn him, no-one would care at all. That Winterfell’s rhythms would continue above him and he would lie in the soil, forgotten, unloved, unwanted, unmourned. 

The only time he had let the words fall silent was when he was hunting. When the rabbit or the pheasant was in his sights, when he had to be still and centred, the breath barely sighing in his nostrils, his heartbeat slow in his ears, so he could nock and draw and hold and wait, wait until the space between the beats of his heart to loose and never miss. He never missed when he let himself be silent.

He went there now, letting the breath draw through his nose, feeling his heart beat in his ears. He put away all thoughts of Reek and the Master and pain, feeling only the silence that was the waiting for the hunt, waiting to nock and draw and loose, to finish his hunt for Sansa.

It held and held and held again, each beat of his heart the only thing to break the silence, holding Reek at bay, hoping it would hold until the time was right to leave the room.

It did not hold.

_ ~You deserve what he did to you. You deserved everything. You deserve to be Reek.~ _

_ ~No,~ _Theon said, but it was faint, unbelieving. 

_ ~You killed Ser Rodrik. You captured Winterfell. You killed those boys.~ _

_ ~I did.~ _

_ ~You betrayed Robb.~ _

_ ~I did.~ _It was barely a whisper. 

_ ~The Master’s been kind to you. The Master loves you. He only hurt you because you made him. If you take Sansa then you’ll make him hurt you again. Sansa is his wife now.~ _

_ ~No.~ _It was less than a whisper, a breath of denial.

_ ~He won’t hurt her. Unless she makes him. He needs her. He won’t hurt her.~ _

The silence drifted then, a moment, another moment. Finally Theon responded. _ ~He will.~ _

_ ~If she makes him,~ _ said Reek.

_ ~No,~ _ replied Theon. _ ~He’ll hurt her. He hurts everyone. He likes hurting people.~ _

_ ~He only hurt you because you deserved it.~ _

_ ~I did. But if I didn’t… he would have hurt me anyway. He hurts… He made me watch. I saw. What he is.~ _

_ ~He loves you. He didn’t want to hurt you. You made him.~ _

_ ~No.~ _A breath again. 

_ ~You betrayed Robb.~ _Always it came down to that, the unforgivable thing, the fulcrum on which his life turned. 

_ ~I did.~ _ A breath, drawn deep. _ ~I can’t change that I did that. I can’t make amends for it. But I can save Sansa. It is… what Robb would have wanted.~ _

_ ~You’ll fail. You’ve failed at everything. You’ll fail again and then the Master will need to hurt you. You could just… go back to him. He’ll be waiting for you. He wants you back. It’s easy. Being Reek. You just have to do what the Master wants. He loves you. And Reek loves the Master.~ _

The last words went in like a knife in his heart, painful and twisting. If he hadn’t needed so badly to keep silent, Theon would have gasped at the feel of them slicing him open, the shame and truth and falseness of them all mixed together. 

He closed his eyes tight, screwing them up to stop the tears that threatened. _ ~No,~ _ he said. _ ~I’m not Reek. I won’t be Reek.~ _

_ ~Why not? It would be easy.~ _

_ ~I promised Yara,~ _ said Theon. ~_I promised I would stay with her.~ _

_ ~But you left her on Pyke. You broke your promise. Just as you always do, Theon Turncloak.~ _

_ ~No.~ _ Theon shook his head. _ ~I didn’t promise I would stay on Pyke. I promised I would stay Theon Greyjoy.~ _

He stood then, collected his pack. 

_ ~I’m Theon Greyjoy.~ _ He closed his eyes again for a moment. _ ~I have to stay Theon Greyjoy. I promised Yara I would.~ _

*****

The door to the room he was sure Sansa was in, yielded easily and quietly under his modified awl. He slipped it open only an inch or two, startled to find that the room inside was lit, a frail dim light. For a long moment Theon debated whether to continue, but there was no going back now. Whoever was in there hadn’t noticed the door opening; if he was wrong and it was some servant, he would hopefully be able to slip away before they woke. 

He saw the source of the light first, a candle close to guttering, sitting on the table beside the bed. Its light slipped over a fall of hair, all he could see of someone curled in a small ball in a nest of blankets. He knew that way of sleeping; a tight knot of limbs wrapped around the pain and misery that Ramsay made, trying even in sleep to make yourself small, make yourself disappear, make yourself not be. Because you knew, when you woke, that he would be waiting for you. 

He knew the fall of hair as well, the autumn colours of the Tullys, bright copper and russets. 

He had found Sansa Stark. Sansa Bolton, he supposed, but he doubted she wanted to wear that name. She knew now; her arms were drawn tight into her body, but on their pale length bloomed dark bruises, the marks of his hands, and the room had been locked from the outside. She knew what Ramsay was now. 

Theon slipped the door closed behind him, sank to his knees beside the bed. “Sansa,” he murmured, then slightly louder, “Sansa.”

She would not scream, he knew. Ramsay hated it when you screamed. It bored him, and Ramsay grew angry when you bored him. Theon had learned early not to scream and Sansa had always been a clever girl. 

So he wasn’t surprised when her eyes flew open, but she did not otherwise move or make a sound as she stared into the dim light and tried to make sense of what she was seeing.

“Sansa,” said Theon again. “It’s Theon. Theon Greyjoy. I’ve come to take you away from him.”

She stared at him for long enough to make him start to get nervous and then sat up, pressed her back against the wall, the back of her hand pressed to her mouth and he watched as her face flickered with emotion. Finally she lowered her hand. “Theon,” she said and he nodded. “You…” she bit her lip as if she wanted to shout at him but knew enough to keep quiet, her voice low and barely audible. “You should be dead.”

“Yes,” said Theon. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I should be dead. I should have died with Robb. I should have been there. I’m sorry.”

“You betrayed my family. You betrayed Robb.” Sansa’s voice shook. 

“I did. I’m sorry,” said Theon. “I can’t… I can’t make amends, Sansa. I can’t. But I can get you out of here. I can get you away from… Ramsay.” He could barely let himself say the name. 

Sansa’s eyes widened then and she glanced down at herself and then back at Theon. She stared at him for what felt like a long time and then stretched out a shaking hand and touched Theon’s cheek, startling him. “He told me… he told me… he would… when he’s inside me, he tells me what he did to you. He likes telling me… what he did to you… while he…” She took her hand away from his cheek, shuddered suddenly. “He was going to… do them to me… when he was… when I’d given him an heir.”

“Yes,” said Theon and her eyes were startled when they looked back at him, as if she hadn’t expected him to believe her. “He will. That’s why we have to go.”

“I tried to escape,” said Sansa and her voice was even smaller, if that was possible. “He said he’d cut off my feet if I tried again. After… after… he was going to give me to the hounds.” She shook her head suddenly, violently, as if in response to a comment Theon hadn’t made. “Not the… not the hunting hounds… the… the stallion hounds…”

“Sansa,” breathed Theon. “Please. Come with me. I betrayed your family. I should have died with Robb. But I’m not… _ him. _I’m not Ramsay. I came back because I knew… I know what he is. I knew… what he’d do to you. I couldn’t… please. Come with me.”

For a moment she squeezed her eyes shut against the dim light and then she nodded. “What do I need to do?”

“Do you have a dress?” Theon asked. “Something warm enough? We need to travel in the snow.” Sansa was wearing only a light shift; she would freeze to death before he got her back to the horses if that was all she had. 

She nodded. “He liked me to… that I was a lady. That he could…”

“I know,” Theon said softly. “I always had to know… everyone always had to know who I… had been. That I had been a lord. A prince. That he had made a Prince of the Iron Islands into...” He shuddered for a moment, then looked up at Sansa. “You’ll need a dress you can get into by yourself. We need to travel fast and far.”

“I’ve got one,” said Sansa and slid her legs sideways, her feet on the floor. Theon backed away suddenly then. 

“I’ve got a sword, a bow. Next door,” he said. “I’ll get them. While you dress,” and he slid out through the door, closing it softly behind him before Sansa could even nod. 

He took his time, making sure everything was firmly in place and waiting until he could be certain she would be dressed by the time he returned. He nodded approvingly when he went back into Sansa’s room; she was not only wearing a woolen dress and sturdy deerskin shoes, but a dark woolen cloak over them, her hair braided neatly behind her. 

Theon took a deep breath, held it for a second, his lips trembling, then lifted his hand, held it out.

She reached out and took his hand, placed her life in his keeping. 

She trusted him. For all that he had done to the Stark family, in that moment she trusted him. Enough. 

They slipped through the door silently, pulling it closed behind them and Theon motioned Sansa to be still for a moment as he used his awl to lock it behind them. Any confusion he could cause, he thought, would be helpful. 

With cat-soft feet he moved then, drawing Sansa silently behind him, padding down the halls of Winterfell as silently as if it was years before and he was sneaking out to Wintertown. Sansa followed, equally silent, and he wondered suddenly if she had also crept quietly at night through Winterfell. Not for whoring, he knew that, but he remembered the giggling of Sansa and Jeyne Poole that would follow him and Robb and Jon around as they trained at arms and he wondered if they met sometimes at night to gossip and dream of handsome princes. 

She wasn’t that girl any more, he knew that now; the face in the dim light of the candle had been a grown woman and she was near as tall as him now. And he doubted she would dream of handsome princes ever again; there had been Ramsay and Ramsay… Ramsay ended dreams. Ramsay ended everything good and bright and kind and sweet and innocent.

They slipped out of the Great Keep and across the dark courtyard of Winterfell, into a dark space beneath the wall of the keep. The light of the waning moon was dim, but Theon held Sansa’s hand in his until his eyes adjusted to the dark, assumed that Sansa’s had as well. “Do you see the postern gate?” he murmured into her ear and she nodded, her hair brushing against his lips. “I need you to open it for me,” he said. “It opens inwards and you need to be behind it when you open it. There’s a guard on the outside - he will look to see who is opening the gate. Can you do that, Sansa?” She was still for a moment and then he felt her nod again, her fingers trembling in his. 

“Watch me,” he said softly. “When you get to the gate. Open it when I’ve drawn my bow.”

He felt her hand slip from his, and she began to walk across the courtyard, and for a moment his heart ached at the bravery that squared her shoulders in the dark. But then he slipped his bow from his shoulder, drew an arrow from his quiver, nocked and drew, holding it loosely at his waist until Sansa reached the door and turned and looked at him. Her face was barely more than a pale shape in the dark, but when he lifted his bow, he saw her nod, and then he held and held, letting the silence fall inside his mind again, the only sound the beat of his heart as the gate drew back, Sansa disappearing behind it as it opened, a darker space that filled suddenly as the guard looked into the keep.

The guard’s face was a pale shape in the darkness, two darker shadows beneath his helmet’s ridge and Theon saw those shadows and waited for one more beat of his heart before he loosed.

The Bolton man’s body made a faint clatter as it hit the ground but it did not move and then Theon was across the courtyard and on it, checking for a breath that did not come from the opened mouth. With a sharp tug he pulled the arrow from the guard’s eye, wiped it quickly against his trousers and returned it to his quiver, slinging his bow back over his shoulder. With another quick movement, he dragged the body back into the darkness under the walls. 

Then he looked up at Sansa, who was staring down at the dead man, and stood up. “Stay close to me,” he murmured into her ear, then pulled her cloak’s hood up over her hair, making her little more than a shadow, and took her hand again, drawing his dagger with his other, not wanting to risk being seen with a drawn sword if some guard or servant was making some unexpected foray outside Winterfell.

But there was no-one to see them as they slipped from the postern gate, a reversal of the way Theon had taken Winterfell so long ago. Quietly they slipped out of the walls near the East Gate and towards Wintertown. Theon quickly led Sansa to the pens where the cattle and sheep were kept in at night, hurrying them through the thick mud and slurry that stood at the gates, blurring their footprints and their scent if the hounds were sent out after them. Then he turned them north, into the trees and hillocks that ran across the north of the keep, staying in the darkest shadows as they fled across the snowy landscape in the night.

The sky was just beginning to lighten as they made their way to the edge of the Wolfswood, and turned north to traverse the border of the wood, up towards the smallholding where Theon prayed that the horses still waited for them. 

They had barely spoken since they had left Winterfell, only small words of instruction to avoid holes in the ground or rocks that barely poked through the snow, that could easily turn an ankle. It was only as they slipped into the shadows at the edge of the Wolfswood that Theon finally felt safe enough to speak. 

“Ramsay left,” said Theon. “Do you know where he was going? It was a war party, I think, not a hunting party.”

Sansa shook her head. “He didn’t tell me anything. After, sometimes. He’d boast. He told me… Lord Cerwyn...”

“I… yes,” said Theon. “I heard about... I think… I think we will be safer in the Wolfswood. I don’t think this is where he would bring so many men on horseback. The only place there is would be Deepwood Motte and it’s no use to him. I have horses, Sansa. I hope. If no-one’s stolen them. There is a smallholding - the farmer was already dead. I left horses for us. If we can get to them, we will be much safer than on foot.”

“He’ll send the hounds after me,” said Sansa faintly and Theon felt her hand tremble in his. 

“He will,” replied Theon. “But not yet. They don’t know which way to send the hounds. And with him gone… he flays his own men, when he decides they did something he didn’t want. He made me watch.” Theon’s voice trailed off for a moment, the things he had been forced to witness driving him into silence. “It stops them… no-one wants to make a decision. In case it is the wrong one. But we need to keep moving.”

Sansa nodded. There was just enough light for Theon to see the exhaustion that lined her face, but she determinedly picked up her skirts and followed him as he led her northwards. 

He knew they were nearly there when they reached the stream that he had followed away from the smallholding on his way to Winterfell. It was a small rill where it crossed the corner of the yard he’d found the horses in, but in the wood it joined with other rills, broadened and ran far more strongly, the shape of the land and the snowmelt filling it with near-freezing water. 

“Sansa,” said Theon, turning to her. The light was stronger again, nearly but not quite daylight yet. “We need to cross.”

She nodded again, looking as if she had no energy left to make words. He took a step into the water and she followed him, and then pulled back suddenly as her foot plunged into the water. “Cold,” she said. “It’s too cold. I can’t. I’ll die.”

“You won’t,” said Theon. “I’ve seen what his hounds do to a person. This way… if we walk up the stream, against the current, we can come out far enough away that it will take hours for the hounds to find our scent again.”

She looked at him then and then stepped into the water behind him, her breath leaving her in a gasp as the water rose and lapped up around her knees. She stumbled against Theon in her shock and he took her other hand, clasped it firmly around his arm and led her upstream, keeping several feet from the shore. It seemed to take forever, fighting against the press of the current, stumbling across the rocky stream bottom, but Theon encouraged Sansa onwards, each step a victory against the freezing cold. Finally they reached a place where the stream was a little narrower, the shore a rocky, tree-strewn tangle of roots and branches the hounds would struggle with and Theon led Sansa across to the other side, the water rising to their waists. He helped her up and over the rocks of the shore until they emerged into a gentler part of the woods and he drew her forwards, the only point of warmth in the world the place where their hands met and clung together. 

It didn’t take long then to find the faint path he remembered at the edge of the wood, to stumble out into the more open land where the sun now was just about to creep above the horizon. He kept on, a steady stumbling walk through the snow, looking back only once to see Sansa’s face mottled blue and white, tears streaming down her cheeks. 

It was only a short trip to the smallholding though, and the sun was still not quite risen as the smallholding came into sight and Theon made a small pleased noise when three horses' heads turned and looked at him, his own horse giving him a welcoming whicker. 

“Over here,” he said to Sansa and drew her to the lean-to, where he had concealed his tack, the pack with his armour. 

The lean-to was dark inside but he knew where everything was and he helped Sansa lower herself gently into the hay that was piled high, the softest thing he could think to sit on. “Sansa,” he said and she shivered, her eyes glassy. “Sansa!” When there was no response, he took a breath, leaned forward, wrapped his arms around her. He wondered if she would flinch away, but instead she leaned into him as he rubbed at her arms, her back, trying to warm her.

Her words, when they came, were a murmur, slurred by the cold that had numbed her lips. “Sansa?” Theon asked again. 

“My feet,” she said again, and he could just hear it. “So cold.”

Of course they were. Theon cursed himself for not even thinking of it. “May I?” he asked and Sansa nodded, letting him draw her wet shoes off and begin to chafe at her feet, desperately white, with his hands. When they both had the smallest colour in them, he left Sansa for a moment, plunged his hands deep into the thickest part of the haystack, drew out the warm hay from within. Slowly he packed the hay around her feet, warming them. The Ironborn were used to dealing with frostbitten hands and toes; the waters of the Sunset Sea were enough to freeze the blood if you stayed out long enough in a gale. Blood warm water would be better, he knew, but he had no way to heat it, so this was the best he could manage. 

He knew it was working when Sansa gasped and tears leaked from her eyes again. “It hurts. It burns.” 

“It’s the blood flowing again,” Theon reassured her. “It’ll feel much better soon,” and he reached in and got out more warm hay, replaced and repacked it around her feet. He watched as she closed her eyes, wept quietly as the blood started to flow properly in her feet, but slowly her tears stopped. 

After a while she looked up at him. “What about you?” Sansa asked.

“What about me?” Theon replied, confused. 

“Don’t your feet…? I could… if you need them warmed, I could?”

Theon stared at her for a moment, almost bewildered. He knew she was probably right. His feet had felt like stumps when he walked up from the stream, like nothing below his knee existed any more. They were waking now, he knew. He could feel them waking. He could feel… it was probably pain. But Ramsay had taught him pain, taught him all the shapes and colours and sizes of pain, had trained him in pain until he knew the meter and measure of it. What his feet were feeling now was… Theon could barely register it. 

“I could take your shoes off,” said Sansa. “Rub your feet?”

“No!” said Theon and shifted suddenly backwards, levering himself up onto his feet quickly. “I’ll saddle the horses. Just… try and dry your dress. Your shoes. Warm up, Sansa.” He fled from the lean-to then, stopping only to gather bridles on the way.

He caught his own horse first, then the stronger looking of the two farm horses. He ducked back into the lean-to long enough to get saddles and packs, his relatively fine one for his horse, the old and somewhat misshapen one that had obviously been what was used on the rare occasions the farm horses were used for riding rather than ploughing. He moved quickly, getting the horses ready for them, re-working his packs until he could hang them from the heavier, sturdier old farm saddle. When all was ready, he went back into the lean-to.

“Sansa,” he said and she nodded up at him, slipped her shoes back on her feet, got up and followed him out to the horses. 

“Oh,” she said suddenly and Theon glanced sharply at her as her hands fluttered in front of her chest.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I can’t ride,” said Sansa softly. “Not astride.”

“I’ve got a dagger,” said Theon. “I can split your skirts if you need me to.”

“No, it’s not. It’s not… Theon could you…” Sansa reached forward then, gripped his wrist lightly. He stared at her puzzled, letting her draw his wrist forward, but he flinched back violently as Sansa began to draw up the front of her skirt. She tightened her grip on his wrist, not letting it free. “Please Theon,” she said softly. “I can’t say…”

In something close to terror Theon watched as Sansa drew up her skirt to her thighs and then pulled his hand forward, sliding it under her skirt. He was frozen as he felt his fingers skim across her smallclothes, and then she released his wrist. Theon staggered a stride backwards, away from Sansa as she dropped her skirt, averted her eyes from his. 

Then he looked down at his hand and understanding dawned, his fingers reddened with blood. “Not your moonblood,” he said and it wasn’t a question. 

“He likes… likes to make me bleed. To make it hurt. Every night he hurts me. I can’t… I can’t ride astride, Theon. I can’t.” It was quietly agonised, pain and shame and sorrow intermingled. 

Theon nodded and looked at the horses. His was the strongest, he thought, the farm horses still recovering from near starvation. He loosed his horse from where it was tied to the rail, led it over to where a large stump jutted out of the ground. He called Sansa over and she joined him on the stump, beside his horse. “May I?” he asked her again and she nodded. Carefully he fitted his hands around her waist, lifted her up until she perched sideways on the saddle. He gave her the reins and she held his horse there as he untied the other horse, let down the poles that made up the gate to the yard. Then he went back to his horse and carefully mounted, sliding in behind Sansa on the saddle. He shifted her body so he could cradle her safely against his chest, firmly nestling her buttocks against his thigh to support and balance her. He thought he could probably rig up some kind of pommel for her, to let her ride her own horse sidesaddle, but not until they’d got far enough away to take the time to do it. 

He tied the farm horse’s reins to his saddle and then reached around Sansa gently, took the reins from her. He clicked gently to his horse and they began to move off. He wasn’t going to try and close the gate; he wasn’t going to let the other horse starve to death. He wasn’t at all surprised when it began to follow them and slowly the three horses made their way to the edge of the Wolfswood, began to follow the path that led them into the wood’s shadows. 

Sansa was silent for so long as they rode that he wondered if she had gone to sleep, lulled by the gentle rock of the horse’s slow pace, the darkness inside the wood. Until he felt a splash of moisture on his wrist, where it had run down the inside of his glove and realised that she was silently weeping, her shoulders shuddering against his chest.

Carefully, slowly, Theon tightened his arm around Sansa’s shoulder, drew her against his chest, let her tears soak into his gambeson as he took her away from Winterfell and Ramsay Bolton. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has sat on the back burner a little as Gifts took over for a while there, but it hasn’t been forgotten. Not even close. 
> 
> This is a Sansa who was all alone in Winterfell, not even Theon to help/hinder/hate and Ramsay so very much angrier after his precious Reek was taken away from him (in case people were wondering about why I chose this particular characterisation). A Ramsay, for those who read the books, who treats Sansa more like he treats Jeyne in A Dance With Dragons.
> 
> Also, I note that in the books, Winterfell doesn’t have a postern gate that opens straight through the walls, and Theon’s men had to swim the moat to get in. As this is TV Winterfell, though, I’m basing it on Theon’s description of how he took the keep and that indicates there is a postern gate that opens from the inside of the keep straight to the outside (as there is clearly no moat between the walls in TV Winterfell!).


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “How do I keep doing this?” she said softly, almost to herself.
> 
> Theon let the silence hang for a long time but finally said, “Doing what, Sansa?”
> 
> “Needing monsters to protect me,” replied Sansa, an edge of shrillness in her voice. “Joffrey, then Cersei, then Littlefinger, then Ramsay, and now you saved me from Ramsay. I keep having to give myself to people who murdered my family to save me from other people who murdered my family.”

The trip to the campsite had taken longer than Theon had planned. He had been expecting that Sansa would be riding her own horse, but having to ride with her had kept his horse’s pace to a slow and steady walk through the Wolfswood. 

At some point, without him being aware of quite when, she had slipped into sleep, so deeply exhausted that when he finally arrived at the hill in the woods that was his target, she had barely woken enough to manage to hold onto his shoulders as he helped her down from his horse and had been asleep sitting up against the tree by the time he had rolled out his minimal bedroll. Sansa had murmured and swayed against him, barely conscious, as he walked her to the roll, helped him slip off her cloak and lower her down. She was fast asleep by the time he tucked the cloak around her shoulders and began to set up the rest of the camp. 

The third horse had stayed with them for the long journey, the herd instinct strong enough to pull it along with its companions and Theon was thankful he’d thought to take some of the spare reins and leathers from the lean-to. They were old and cracked and had obviously not been used for a very long time, but he was able to rig them up into two more sets of hobbles. Once he had untacked the two horses, he checked their feet, gave them each a small handful of hard feed and then hobbled all three of them and let them loose to find what grazing they could around the camp.

He should try and sleep, he knew, just a short nap, but every slight noise, every shadow made him start and swing around to face it, his hand gripping the hilt of his sword. His heart beat fast inside his chest, his ears and eyes straining for any hint that Ramsay’s men had followed them, the whisper of the far-off music of hounds. None came, but in the end Theon knew there would be no sleep for him. So he went to the small stream that laced around the southern base of the hill. There was a stand of willows a little way down the stream and he quickly cut enough canes for what he wanted. 

It took him a little time to light a small fire, a tiny, near smokeless thing he fed with dry branches and offcuts of willow cane, and then to shape and mould the canes, using one of his spare bowstrings to tie everything together. He finally felt some of the tension leave his shoulders as he tested the newly shaped pommel on the old farm saddle, finally satisfied as he tied it in place and soaked the string and canes in water to swell and set it more firmly. 

By the time he was done with the intricate work, Sansa was beginning to make small noises and movements in her sleep, and it was clear that she was close to waking. Quietly, Theon rustled through his pack, pulled out the small pans he had for cooking and melting snow to drink. He filled them from the stream and let one sit within the fire until it simmered and then settled it back in the snow to cool it somewhat. As the water cooled, he topped it up with tiny additions from the pan within the fire, keeping the water warm.

It was only a few minutes later that Sansa finally woke. She was still at first, utterly still, in a way Theon knew well; the moments after waking when you tried to assess if _he_ was there, if pain was coming, the stillness he had seen sometimes in rabbits before a fox. Then Sansa sat up suddenly, an abrupt movement that left her staring at him where he sat on the other side of the small fire. With darting movements of her hands, she pulled her cloak from her legs, wrapped it tightly around her shoulders. 

Theon nodded at the pan resting in the snow, then reached into the pack sitting beside him and pulled out a small cloth, left it next to the pan. “For you,” he said.

Sansa stared at him for a long moment and then said, her voice hoarse from sleep, “What for?”

“You’ll want to go to the privy,” replied Theon, dropping his eyes to the fire. “It… helps.”

There was a silence for a moment and then he heard Sansa rise and come near to him, saw her take up the pan and cloth, heard her footsteps move away until she had obviously moved behind the curve of the hill and out of his sight. 

Theon had fucked more than one virgin in his time but he’d never particularly enjoyed it. No matter how enthused or otherwise they’d been about his lordly cock, it was obvious that his size meant it wasn’t comfortable for them, and he’d hated it if they cried. He doubted any of the women he’d fucked had considered him a particularly kind or thoughtful bedmate, but he had never sought to physically harm them. But he had visited Ros once, a couple of days after a commotion in the town that had involved the Maester and Ned Stark and the sudden exile to the Wall of one of Ser Rodrik’s men, and she had told him of one of the younger whores having to be tended to after being fucked so hard, so viciously, that she had torn inside, bruised and bleeding and terrified until her cries had finally brought the brothel’s guards to save her. It had been little more than idle gossip then, something to talk about between bouts of fucking, but he remembered how Ros’ hand had been trembling against his chest as she’d spoken of it, the way she wouldn’t look at him, the same way Sansa hadn’t looked at him when he had seen the blood on his hand. Every night, she had said. It was Ramsay and it was every night. 

And Theon always remembered it, not just the pain that had come after Ramsay had… after Myranda and Violet and… after the night he could never let himself think on. He had had the Maester tending him, on Ramsay’s orders he knew, to make sure he didn’t die of blood fever, spoil Ramsay’s fun. But Theon hadn’t been allowed milk of the poppy and pissing had been… There weren’t words for the agony that pissing had been in the weeks after, until things had healed somewhat. He didn’t have a Maester for Sansa or milk of the poppy, only warm water and a soft cloth but he could only hope it helped. 

He heard her footsteps come back, but he didn’t look up from the fire until she said, “Theon.”

She was close to him, clutching the pan and cloth tightly in her hands. “Are you… alright?” Theon asked softly.

“The bleeding’s stopped,” she said, her voice distant. “It’s… I still…” She stopped speaking then, her chest rising and falling rapidly with her breaths. “I need to clean the cloth.”

“Stream’s at the bottom of the hill,” said Theon, nodding his head in the direction and he watched as Sansa made her way down the gentle slope, then busied himself pulling his few stored provisions from his pack, emptying the tin that had been on the fire and putting in a couple of hard tack biscuits, a few bits of rabbit he’d smoked to preserve. 

Sansa came back up the hill, proffered him the cleaned tin and cloth without a word. He nodded at the small stone on the other side of the fire for her to sit on, as he passed her the provisions and his waterskin. 

She picked at the food for a few minutes and finally Theon said, “We’ve only got a couple of hours until sunset. We’ll stay here tonight.” He nodded up behind them, where the crest of the hill was a jumble of tumbled rock and roots that towered over them. “We stayed here sometimes when we were hunting. It’s easy to defend - I can see anyone coming towards us in most directions and nothing can get in behind us.”

Sansa nodded and then said, quietly, “Where are you taking me?”

“Jon is Lord Commander of Castle Black,” replied Theon. “I can take you to the Wall. He’ll help you.” He nodded at the old farm saddle, sitting beside him. “I made you a pommel,” he added. “It won’t last for too long, but hopefully long enough for you to… that you’ll be able to ride astride.”

Sansa looked at the saddle, the double pommel made of willow canes and bowstring attached to it now. “How do I keep doing this?” she said softly, almost to herself.

Theon let the silence hang for a long time but finally said, “Doing what, Sansa?”

“Needing monsters to protect me,” replied Sansa, an edge of shrillness in her voice. “Joffrey, then Cersei, then Littlefinger, then Ramsay, and now you saved me from Ramsay. I keep having to give myself to people who murdered my family to save me from other people who murdered my family.”

Theon cringed backwards, away from the fire, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said, a nearly frantic tone in his voice. 

“You’re Theon,” she said, finally looking up at him. “Theon! You grew up with us! You were Robb’s sworn brother! And you betrayed him!”

“I did,” said Theon softly. 

“You betrayed my family!”

“I did.”

“You captured Winterfell. My home. _Our_ home, Theon.”

“I did.” He wouldn’t raise his eyes to hers, curling in on himself. 

“You killed Bran and Rickon!” It was a harsh cry, Sansa’s searing sense of betrayal clear.

“I…” Theon could not finish, could not say the words. It was the secret he could not tell, the secret Ramsay had carved into his flesh over and over again, the thing he could not say or he would hang on the cross forever, piece after piece of him torn away. 

“They were your brothers, Theon. Our brothers. You’ve known them since they were born.” He heard the rustle of Sansa’s skirts on the other side of the fire and then she was next to him, her hands gripping his shoulders. “They were your brothers, Theon. And you killed them. Tell me to my face that they weren’t your brothers!”

“They weren’t Bran and Rickon!” It was torn from his mouth, with a force he could barely comprehend, Sansa’s righteous rage tearing it from him. She went still suddenly, but he couldn’t seem to stop the words tumbling from him. “I couldn’t find them. It was two farm boys. I killed them and burned their bodies, so no-one would know.”

The silence stretched between them, long and fraught, as Theon fought against the dread that rose within him, the fear of the cross, the fear that Reek was there, right there, just beneath the surface waiting to come back. 

“Do you know where they are?” Sansa asked, her voice almost numb, matching the shocked expression on her face when Theon could bring himself to raise his eyes, look at her. 

Theon shook his head numbly, as Sansa’s hands flexed on his shoulders. “You need to tell me, Theon, tell me where they are,’ and then he was tearing himself from her grip, flinging himself upright, staggering away to lean against the nearest tree, his breath coming rapidly, his eyes closed in terror. 

It took time, enough time for his breathing to slow slightly and then he heard Sansa rise, come up behind him.

“Theon,” she said softly.

“Not Theon,” he said. “Reek.”

“What… what did he do to you?” Sansa asked, her voice almost gentle. 

“Strapped me to a cross. Cut away piece after piece of me, until there was no Theon left. I can’t… I can’t tell… it was the thing… I couldn’t… tell. The secret. He carved… carved it into my bones. Into every part of me. I can’t tell the secret… Reek can’t tell the secret. I can’t… I promised Yara.”

“What did you promise Yara?” Sansa asked.

“I promised.” Theon stopped abruptly, took deep breaths, unable to open his eyes. “I promised Yara I’d stay Theon Greyjoy. I wouldn’t be Reek. If you keep asking… it was the secret… I couldn’t tell…”

There was a long silence then, and then he felt the lightest touch of Sansa’s fingers on the back of his shoulder. “Your name is Theon. Theon Greyjoy. Last living son of Balon Greyjoy, Lord of the Iron Islands. Theon.”

It was a gift to him, his name, given back to him again, as Yara had given it back to him, over and over. He nodded and returned a gift. “No-one found them,” he said and then staggered further into the woods, away from Sansa and Reek and Ramsay and the cross that filled his nights with terror. 

*****

It had taken him little time to compose himself, long trained as he had been to put on an obedient facade for Ramsay whenever he needed to. But he had returned to the camp only to collect his bow and quiver and then headed down to the stream and towards a clearing nearby. It was nearly dark when he returned with a couple of rabbits slung over his shoulder and he was pleased that Sansa had taken his advice to hide if she heard anyone coming, emerging from the dark of the rocks behind the camp only when he called her name. Their conversation was little more than monosyllables and Sansa had curled up to sleep shortly after, Theon nestling himself against his horse’s tack, curled up inside his cloak. The horses hadn’t strayed far from the camp, and every hoofbeat he heard, each low whicker and snort made him start. In the end he managed only a few hours sleep in the depth of the night. 

They travelled slowly through the woods, over the next few days, Sansa riding the sturdier of the two farm horses, Theon’s crafted pommel letting her ride side-saddle safely. The third horse became their pack horse, lightly loaded, but useful in case something went wrong with either of the two ridden horses, Theon thought (and he did not mention to Sansa that, if worse came to worst on the way to the Wall, if they were trapped in the snow as winter deepened, they could always eat it). Their nights remained the same, barely speaking to each other, Theon’s archery providing their food, his sleep interrupted by his unceasing need for vigilance.

It almost did not surprise him then, that on the fourth day Sansa shouted his name as they rode and he woke barely in time to stop himself falling from his saddle. 

“You can’t keep doing this, Theon,” she said, as he blinked at her, his eyes sandy. “You need to sleep. Properly. You don’t have to guard me every night. Let me stand guard over you.”

“If someone comes,” he said, words slow, mouth slow, brain slow. “You’ve never held a sword. Never trained with the bow. They’ll know. You can’t protect me.”

“And you can’t protect me if you’re asleep on your feet,” said Sansa, exasperated, and for a moment Theon was back in Winterfell and Sansa was stamping her feet about something, probably something Arya had done, and he felt young again. “Train me how to hold the bow. I know you can’t train me to shoot anyone by the time you need to sleep, but show me enough that I can look competent if someone comes.”

He blinked at her owlishly for a moment and then said, “You always were a clever girl,” as if it was a revelation and Sansa rolled her eyes at him.

“Of course I was, Theon,” she said, and for the first time there was something like warmth in her voice. “And you were the best archer I ever saw. So show me how to hold the bow.”

“And nock and draw,” he replied, feeling like his brain was waking up. “It’s a recurve bow, not a longbow, so you should be able to draw it. If you can nock and hold, that should keep anyone away long enough for you to kick me awake.”

“What about if you don’t wake up?” Sansa asked, but her voice was almost light and teasing. 

Theon shrugged. “I’m a well-trained dog, Sansa. I wake when my Master kicks me.”

She stared at him for a long moment, her air of teasing gone and then nodded. 

For someone who had never done more than watch the boys at their training, Sansa proved surprisingly quick at being able to nock and draw and hold the bow steady. Theon lessened the tension in the string to reduce the draw until she could manage it easily. It didn’t take her long to be able to manage a competent looking draw, though her one attempt at trying to hit a target indicated that the draw was, for now, as far as her competence stretched. 

When he felt she was ready enough, Theon led them to the site he’d selected for their next camp, thankfully not far away. They’d grown efficient at setting up the camp and it was soon ready, a quick meal of leftover rabbit enough for them. Theon finally stood as Sansa continued to glare at him over the fire and set out the bedroll, curling himself up in his cloak on it, his eyes heavy. 

But he couldn’t sleep still, each noise from the horses making him start and wake again, exhaustion thick in his brain and his limbs but overridden by the fear that each noise could be… him. His hounds. His men.

Until finally Sansa made an impatient noise and then he found his head lifted, nestling upon her thighs, her fingers carding softly through his hair, as he remembered Yara doing for him when she was trying to persuade him to sleep in his own bed. Then Sansa began to sing, her voice high and pure and it was a song he remembered, a song Lady Catelyn sang to Arya and Bran and Rickon as they curled within their cribs. Theon fell asleep to the soft drift of the words that had wended down the halls of Winterfell, the sounds of a keep at peace and safe, even for its Ironborn ward and its young red-headed Lady.

*****

“Will it be much longer?” asked Sansa, huddling into her cloak. The snow was starting to fall more regularly as they headed north and although it was warmer in the woods than in the open, the air was becoming colder. 

“Weeks,” replied Theon. “We aren’t travelling fast. At least another month until we get to the Wall, and then I’ll get you as close as I can to Castle Black. I’ll take you around Mole’s Town and then I should be able to leave you where a patrol will find you quickly and take you to Jon.”

There was silence for a moment, then Sansa said quietly, a hitch in her voice, “You aren’t coming with me?”

Theon shrugged. “Jon will have me killed the minute I walk through the gate.”

“I won’t let him,” said Sansa and suddenly her horse was beside his, and she was looking at him, almost fiercely. “I’ll tell him the truth about Bran and Rickon.”

“And the truth about the farm boys I killed in their place? The truth about Ser Rodrik, who I beheaded? The truth about Robb, who I betrayed?” Theon’s voice was harsh.

“If you take the black all your crimes are forgiven,” said Sansa, gently. 

“I don’t want to be forgiven,” said Theon. “I can never make amends to your family for the things I’ve done.”

There was a long silence then, broken only by the sound of the horse’s footsteps until Sansa finally said, “Where will you go?”

“Home,” replied Theon. “Yara… I need to go back to Yara. She’ll be so angry at me…” The last was quiet, almost to himself.

“For coming to save me?” Sansa asked.

“For going back to… back to him. To Ramsay. To risk him… for a Stark!” Theon shook his head at that. 

“Will you be alright?” said Sansa, finally, quietly, her voice subdued.

“It’s Yara,” said Theon. “She’ll be angry, but she’ll never hurt me.” 

Sansa nodded and slowly her horse drifted back to behind Theon’s again. 

*****

They set up the camp quickly, hobbling the horses and lighting a small fire, so fast that they were nearly ready to eat within half an hour of arriving at a spot Theon considered suitable. But provisions were low and Sansa drew herself quietly back into the dark shadows that lay beneath a fallen tree as Theon took up his bow and went to search for game. 

He had been gone for about half an hour, so Sansa wasn’t at all surprised when she heard footsteps nearby but when she looked up, the man near the horses wasn’t Theon. For a moment she stared and then she flinched back in shock, further into the darkness. But it didn’t take long before the man, obviously searching for the owner of the horses and the tack, spotted her. She shrank back further as he looked at her, but then he looked around.

“You aren’t alone,” he said. “Three horses. Two saddles. You’re not alone.” He tilted his head, looked at her. “Otherwise I’d take you, too. Be nice to have something to warm my bones at night. But I’m just taking your horses, you understand that.” Sansa nodded, unable to speak, unable to scream for Theon. “Your horses and your tack and there’s probably some good stuff in those packs near you. You’re going to hand them over to me, quick smart.”

“We’ll die,” said Sansa, feeling like her tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth, that she could barely get the words out.

“But I won’t,” replied the man. “Now hand over those packs before…”

Sansa never got to hear what the man was going to say as something grew from his throat suddenly, a strange black growth she did not understand. It was only as his hand rose to it, as he sank to his knees, that she saw Theon in the distance, bow in hand and knew that it was his arrow that had burst through the man’s throat. 

Then the man was face down on the ground and Theon was beside her, checking carefully that she wasn’t wounded and she was suddenly shaking in his arms in reaction, his hands carefully stroking her back as she shook and wept silently. 

“I’m sorry,” he said at last, when she could stop weeping. “I heard him talking and I came as quickly as I could. I’m sorry he frightened you.”

Sansa shook her head. “I… gods, Theon, I… I’m sorry.” She reached up, touched his cheek suddenly with a hand that trembled. “I’ve never said… thank you. For coming. I kept thinking… maybe it was a trick. Maybe you were a trick. Maybe Ramsay had pretended that you’d escaped, that you were his, that this was all a trick. That you were taking me back to him. So he could… could punish me. Do the things he said he’d do if I tried… to escape.” She looked behind Theon, at the dead man on the ground. “But it’s not, is it? It’s not a trick. You came back. You came back to him to save me. You risked… you saved me. It’s not a trick.”

“It’s not a trick, Sansa,” said Theon, softly. “You’ve escaped. You aren’t going back to him. I would die to make sure that you never have to go back to him.”

“Maybe,” said Sansa and her smile was small and trembling but it was there, “we try not to do the dying part.”

“Maybe,” said Theon and nodded, then stood up, moved over to the dead man, looked at him. “He’s Baratheon,” he said. “Stannis’ man. He must have deserted.” Carefully he began to strip the man of his armour. 

Sansa stood up, came over and looked at the dead soldier. “That was what Littlefinger said when we were coming north - that the Baratheon army was going up to the Wall, to… I don’t know. Treat with Mance Rayder. Or kill him. Or try and persuade the Watch to join him. It was… it was all a long time ago. But that’s why I married Ramsay - if Stannis won in the north, then I would be in Winterfell and Stannis could name me Warden of the North, keep a Stark in Winterfell.”

Theon stopped for a moment. “So Stannis’ army went up to the Wall? And he’s had deserters.”

“Must have,” agreed Sansa.

“Sansa, we can’t go to Castle Black,” said Theon. “We don’t know how many deserters there are. Stannis doesn’t have deserters; they’re all fanatics about that Lord of the Light or whatever that Red Woman he’s got talks about. If one’s deserted, there’s going to be more and they’ll be in the Wolfswood. If they were still in his army we’d be safe here but not if they’re all through the woods.”

“So what do we do?” asked Sansa, her voice small.

“Go home,” replied Theon. “Back to Pyke. This is the first deserter we’ve seen, so it’s likely we’re south of most of them and we can stay ahead of them. Pyke is… its the only place I can safely take you, Sansa. I’m sorry. I can send a raven to Jon from there. We can send you up to the Shadow Tower by ship; I’ll persuade Yara. Get you back to Jon that way. I’m sorry but I can’t risk trying to fight my way through half of Stannis Baratheon’s army.”

“Theon,” said Sansa, almost sharply, catching his eye. “It’s alright. We’ll go to Pyke, if that’s what’s safest.” She drew a deep breath. “I trust you,” she said softly.

Theon nodded slightly and then turned back to continue stripping the armour off the dead man. “What are you planning to do with him?” Sansa asked.

“We need some more clothes. He doesn’t need them any more. And no harm in an extra sword and dagger. Some new boots.”

“New boots would be nice” said Sansa, looking down at her doeskin shoes, looking somewhat the worse for wear now. “If I had a needle and thread, I could even make them fit.”

“I’m Ironborn, Sansa,” said Theon and continued as Sansa looked at him quizzically, “A sailor. An archer. I’ve always got needle and thread.” His lip curled up at the corner and he made a noise that might almost have been a chuckle, that ended in a gasp. 

“What’s wrong?” asked Sansa.

“I was going to say,” Theon started and then stopped for a second. “I was going to say ‘don’t tell Robb that’.” 

Sansa smiled suddenly. “You two were always such _boys_,” she said. 

“Yes,” replied Theon. “Boys, playing at war and kings. Except I fucked up. I should never have broken my oath to him.”

“Robb broke an oath, too, Theon,” said Sansa, and her gaze remained placid as Theon glanced up sharply at her. “He promised to marry one of Walder Frey’s daughters and he broke that oath because… because he was a boy, who thought he was in love. It cost him his life at the Red Wedding. You were both boys, both thinking you had more power than you did, that you could break oaths without consequences.” Sansa reached down, her fingers curling around Theon’s shoulder. “The same as I thought I could be a clever girl and marry Ramsay and that there wouldn’t be… consequences. We’ve all made terrible choices, Theon. We’ve all paid for them.”

Theon nodded, unable to speak for a minute. “Let me get that needle and thread,” he said finally and Sansa let go of his shoulder and let him walk away to the pack, pretending that she hadn’t seen the tears that brimmed on his lashes. 

He was Theon Greyjoy, traitor and turncloak and hostage and prisoner, and still, at times, he was just a boy. 

*****

Heading south meant at least it was getting warmer. They had been travelling for a little time, swinging far west into the woods, away from Winterfell, with Theon aiming to bring them out into the Rills, rather than the Barrowlands, further away from Torrhen’s Square. They were getting close to the southern boundary of the Wolfswood now and had stopped at a small stream, taking the time to stretch their legs in the dappled sunlight, letting the horses drink their fill. 

Sansa had, finally, felt ready to try riding astride and the return to normalcy had obviously made her heart light. So she was smiling as she looked at the horses and suddenly said to Theon, “I think they need names,” she declared. 

“The horses?” Theon asked.

“Of course the horses,” she replied, rolling her eyes at him, suddenly so much her twelve year old self that Theon found his mouth curving up in the first smile he remembered in… years. 

“I guess… it makes sense,” he replied. He looked at the two farm horses that Sansa was holding. “What were you thinking?” he asked.

“Well,” replied Sansa. “They’re a mare and a gelding so I thought…”

“Florian and Jonquil,” shouted Theon, his words overlapping with Sansa’s. 

She stared at him for a moment and then actually stamped her foot at him. “Theon!” she said, sharply, and then her face became rueful. “Am I really that predictable?”

“You’re really that predictable, Sans,” replied Theon and his smile grew fond. He walked forward a few steps then, wrapped a soft arm around her shoulders and kissed her forehead lightly. “Don’t change, Sansa. Please.”

For a moment she leaned into his arms, her face pressing into his gambeson. “Some things are… have already changed me, Theon,” she said softly. “I don’t believe in the songs as much as I used to. But I’ll try.”

She leaned back then and he stepped back, releasing her. 

“So what’s your horse called?” she asked him, curiously and Theon was startled.

“He… doesn’t have a name,” he said slowly.

“Theon, you’ve had him for months,” said Sansa. “Why doesn’t he have a name?”

Theon stared at Sansa, for long enough that she dropped her eyes from his, obviously uncomfortable. “I didn’t…” he said and stopped. “I… he took everything away. If you… If I… cared about anything… anyone. He killed all the Ironborn in Winterfell. My men. They betrayed me, gave me up to him in return for safe passage. But he killed them all. When… when I knew what he was, who he was, he showed me… he’d flayed them all. He showed me Dagmer’s skin. And there was Tansy… And Kyra… He killed Smiler. When he was sacking Winterfell, he burned the stables. I watched Smiler burn…” Theon trailed off. 

There was a long silence then, until finally Sansa said, “I’m sorry, Theon,” and he shook his head at her.

“Not your fault,” he said, hoarsely. 

“Maybe,” said Sansa, “it’s time to give your horse a name. He’s your horse, Theon. He loves you,” and as if the chestnut gelding understood, he chose that moment to nudge his nose against the back of Theon’s shoulder. “Ramsay can’t take him off you. He can’t punish you by hurting him. Maybe it’s time to take that back off Ramsay.”

Theon turned then, away from Sansa’s soft eyes, busying his hands with the reins as his horse butted his head against Theon’s gambeson, vigorously rubbing up and down and finally stopping, leaning into Theon’s chest. Theon stroked his horse’s ears softly, rubbing them in a way he knew it enjoyed and it nickered into his chest. 

“Mine,” he said softly. “You’re Mine,” and Mine butted his head gently against Theon’s stomach and ignored the tears that dripped into his forelock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah - my babies. Making their way in the world together, protecting each other, saving each other from the monsters. And taking very tiny steps towards healing...
> 
> (Also, ugh, logistics. War on horseback and foot is slow. Travel is slow. Everything is slow and awkward and you have to try not to let your horse/s go lame and make sure you’ve got water and... writing GoT with actual realistic travel and timeframes is all about making your way slowly from point A to point B. No wonder GRRM put dragons in there, to decrease travel time!)


End file.
